Alexander H. Shapiro provides a fresh look at the influences on Wagner's Götterdämmerung, and critically re-evaluates the composer’s intellectual worldview as revealed in his own prose works, letters and diary entries. The book challenges conventional views that continue to impede a clear understanding of this work’s meaning.
“A pleasing feature of this book is the clear and comprehensible discussion of the music of Gotterdammerung.”...the book “deserves to be widely read with close critical attention”...“it is a significant contribution to the ongoing debate that will always swirl around this most controversial of artworks.”
Roger Allen, The Wagner Journal
Alexander H. Shapiro is a practicing lawyer and independent scholar based in New York, U.S. His published works include “McEwan and Forster: The Perfect Wagnerites” in The Wagner Journal (2011), and “‘Drama of an Infinitely Superior Nature’: Handel’s Early English Oratorios and the Religious Sublime” in Music & Letters (1993).